Not Veni, Vedi, Vici?
Rather…in truth and honesty:
I came, I saw, I did not conquer…I just appropriated…
and now…it’s all mine!
If one would tell American designers that few among them are true originators, many of them would shudder and object, even if most of them suffer from Cryptomnesia, which occurs “when a forgotten memory of the act of having copied someone else’s original work stands in for their plagiarism, and when this memory returns into consciousness it does so without it being recognized by them as such. They believe that it is something new and original, falsely recalling to have generated the concept or the graphic and typographic form and language. They are falsely experiencing as if it were a new inspiration.” Psychiatrists would consider this a malady, but for the design profession this is a historical foundation. Instead of standing on the shoulders of very short persons, would it not be more honest to recognize that all progress, inventions, and discoveries come from persons committed to learning, who long before were inventors, and we now are the connection with that history? We also must finally recognize that design is a trade or a craft begotten by the printing trade and, as such, a guild always sent out journeymen, the very first openly identifiable industrial spies, to observe and copy, very much like Japanese tourists in the fifties, and report back their discoveries. Now we have design schools and design historians, and the true history of the design trade has been a convoluted distortion of reality and has become a personality cult.
For that reason alone, I have always admired Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer. Manutius is considered by me to be an early design academic, worth his weight in gold at any of today’s universities. He did then in the fifteenth century what the digital technologies afford us now. Instead of fighting over the tattered rags of useless anecdotal notoriety, we could, like Manutius did, become a driving force in preserving and supporting the health and wealth of culture, rather than that of business and marketing. Manutius’s gift to all following generations lies in his rediscovery and preservation of ancient texts, which, without his efforts, would have been lost, maybe forever. Manutius was a driving force behind the rediscovery of ancient literature throughout the Renaissance and this separated him from those who only sharpened their technical craft. He edited and produced the first printed editions of many of the Greek and Latin classics. He published five books of Aristotle. They were pocket-sized and relatively inexpensive editions. In his list of authors were Aristophanes, Aesop, Catullus, Erasmus, Euripides, Herodotus, Homer, Juvenal, Lucan, Martial, Petrarca, Pindar, Plato, Sophocles, Theocritus, Thucydides, Virgil, and Xenophon. His most famous book was the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna, 1499, with what are considered the first book illustrations that are not typographic embellishments, but woodcuts supporting the narrative. Manutius also published the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.
Today, designers like to surround themselves with successful businessmen and marketers. Not Manutius; he invited significant humanists to the table; teachers, language experts, historians, among them:
Girolamo Aleandro
1480–1542, an early teacher of Greek at the University in Paris who edited texts by Isocrates and Plutarch;
Pietro Bembo
1470–1547, not a type designer as one well-known design historian presented, but a learned cardinal who studied Greek under the scholar Constantine Lascaris; later his major efforts were spent reaffirming and promoting classical humanism. He published the History of Venice, an addition of Petrarch’s Italian Poems, Prose della volgar lingua, and supplements included in editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Bembo type was designed not by him, but by Francesco Griffo of Bologna, in 1496;
Erasmus of Rotterdam
1466–1536, who wrote exclusively in Latin or Greek. He was a prolific writer and authored or translated about 150 books, in addition to more than two thousand letters, which, because of his elegant use of language, were known all over Europe as examples of high quality. Erasmus brought about one thousand words to paper every day. He saw himself, and Manutius (the latter, in my eyes, is the first graphic designer of consequence), and the Gutenberg printing technology as a main provider of education: “People are not born as human beings, they evolve as such after they have been educated.” Would that not be a good motto for a design school, making the difference between education and vocational training? He was also a highly regarded textual critic, a publisher, and a grammarian. He founded modern philology. His work is still widely accepted in the scientific reconstruction of Greek phonology.
Johannes Reuchlin
1455–1522, was a German-born humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, and is considered, with Erasmus of Rotterdam, the most important European humanist. His translations, editions and personal commentaries promoted the knowledge of the ancient Greek language. Through his time in Germany, he studied the ancient Hebrew language to extraordinary levels, which enabled him to frame the knowledge foundation for the study of the Old Testament. In the following years, his work De rudimentis hebraicis which served as a basis, Reuchlin developed into a German representatives of Renaissance Platonism. He discovered the mystical and theological foundation of the Kabbalah and published De verbo mirifico, 1494, and De arte cabalistica, 1517, two of the most important documents. His book Augenspiegel, in which he argues against burning Jewish books, was examined by theologians of Cologne and at the Erfurt University and itself recommended for censorship. Hermann Serge, the Erfurt theologian, decided to censor Reuchlin’s work, however, he paid tribute to Reuchlin’s erudition and literary skills. Reuchlin’s translations, editions, and personal commentaries promote knowledge of the ancient Greek language. Through his extraordinary study of ancient Hebrew language he brought the Old Testament to be explored. In the following years, his work De rudimentis hebraicis served the investigations as a basis.
Some Notes on the Unwritten History
It is somewhat dumbfounding to realize how some persons rewrite reality, especially in design history, which in many ways does not really matter. Design would always like to play a bigger role than all the other professions that aid us in making each day. Still, it is quite amusing to see documents full of little white lies.
An example:
The history of Unimark is now just a mystique. The only one that has put his stamp on that period is Massimo Vignelli, right or wrong, and with most of the founders gone and six feet under, whatever he has written about Unimark, true or not, is now enshrined at the RIT Design Archive, and will set the tone for posterity.
One never hears references to Fogelman or Larry Kline, who were involved in founding the design company. Sometimes Eckerstrom is mentioned. Jay Doblin was a latecomer, when the group is already falling apart. Still, the professional media gives Doblin, a design talker/theorist, more credit than the work of doers/implenters/designers.
The MIT Example
Meggs never understood that MIT design culture was not founded by an American designer, but by a wordsmith, an writer/editor, namely John I. Mattill, whose early vision of a Modernist approach to campus graphics and identities set the stage for the evolution of the publications arm of MIT. For several seasons, to supplement staff members on leave or sabbaticals, a little less than a decade before I was hired, Mattill imported designers from Europe to work on a long list of summer session announcements for the university (as I understand it, MIT was one of the first institutions to provide educational opportunities during summers, which were not remedial but equal to regular curricular components).
John Mattill was also very active on the CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education), the result of a merger between the American Alumni Council and the American College Public Relations Association.
When I joined the group, I got to know some of the European designers—but not all of them. There was George Adams (Georg Telscher), a former Bauhaus student, who, of course, brought with him the Bauhaus mystique. By introducing the MIT design staff to the Bauhaus, he transmitted some of the superb teaching techniques and theories. In addition, there was a man, whom we called the “Bauhaus Kepes” (or Little Moholy), across the street, and Walter Gropius’s architecture office just a stone’s throw across Cambridge. The mystique had feet, faces, and voices.
Kurt Kranz, a former Bauhaus student in Dessau, was a major contributor as guest docent to the curriculum at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center in the late sixties—also just down the street.
Also Toshihiro Katayama, a Japanese designer, who came from the strong Swiss Geigy experience to teach at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center.
Then there was Paul Talmann (1932–1987), a wonderful Swiss Minimalist who worked with kinetic sculptures and modular paintings and constructions that could be arranged by a willing audience. Paul Talmann designed the same summer session programs as we all did, then and later.
But Paul also influenced Ralph Coburn’s work, which can be seen in the Boston MFA. Also, Ralph worked side by side with Ellsworth Kelly. He and Ellsworth had been friends from youth, and had amazing exchanges on visual and aesthetic sensibilities and attitudes, which one cannot trace back to design, but distinctly to minimal art.
Then there is this amazing mystery woman about whom most Americans know so little: Thérèse Moll. During the time, when I was a design student in Hamburg in the early fifties, Walter Herdeg, the publisher of Graphis, showed her work in his introduction of the Swiss avant-garde. Later, Herdeg showed her work in much greater detail through a lecture presentation, also in Hamburg, by Gottfried Honegger, who at that time was a well-known Swiss Minimalist and designer who also presented the work of the young design group and those who founded the trilingual journal of the “New Graphic Design.” Honegger and, I am not sure, but I think it was with his wife, Warja (also a superb designer of purely graphic narrative books and exhibitions, like Swiss history, without text) presented the underlying philosophical principles of Swiss Design. Honegger chose work by Karl Gerstner, Thérèse Moll, Gottfried Obermatt, Kurt Wirth, and Celestino Piatti, but also work by Aldo Calabresi, Franco Griniani, and Bruno Munari as examples of international styled graphics. Moll was also introduced as designer using “photographics,” a mode of designing that developed speed a few years later.
Thérèse Moll was a designer in Karl Gerstner’s studio and a close personal friend of him, around the time when John Mattill invited her to work in the MIT Publications Office in 1958. She introduced the MIT Office of Publications staff to modular typography.
Muriel Cooper was on a leave so Moll substituted for her. Muriel picked up the concepts of modular typography much later, when she began her work on the famous Bauhaus Book, which became the cornerstone of her design efforts. Her work, before her assignment at the MIT Press, is much more eclectic. It lacked the form-discipline. She also was not a disciplined typographer. Carl Zahn helped her over the hurdles.
Carl Zahn, a highly regarded and respected Boston designer, an expert in book design, and head of the design office at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was a very close friend of Muriel, Jackie, and Ralph. Carl was not only superbly educated in the liberal arts but he also stretched his interests beyond the typical European “Swiss” design fad. He knew the people at the different type foundries of Haas, Bauer, and Stempel. Because he was also a close, personal friend of Zapf, when Zapf worked at Stempel working on Optima, they shared issues of cultural history rather than surface trends. The MIT publications design staff, including me, consulted Carl Zahn for nearly everything—availability of special type faces, quality printing resources, paper stocks, paper pricing, and especially when the quality of color separations needed to be addressed (up to 80 percent, most likely even more, of all MIT projects had low budgets that would not allow four-color work; they were either black or black plus one additional ink). Carl is another unsung design hero, who, because he had no need for notoriety, was overlooked. Meanwhile, he was one of the best book designers ever in Boston. He did not have to inflate his resume. His work alone spoke for him.
I don’t remember many designers of the sixties who were able to deprogram or reprogram any odd typeface in such ways, so they were able to compete with newly cut faces. Before digital technology, at that time typeface was estill produced through the matrix systems of Linotype, Intertype (better than Linotype), Monotype (much more flexible than the former systems), or Ludlow (a process closest to Gutenberg’s, in mats were hand-set into a composing stick and then cast in metal).
When I traveled home for the first time to Germany in 1963, Carl gave me introductions to his friends at Stempel, Bauer, the Klingspor Museum, and other places. Hermann Zapf spent a whole day showing me the steps between the conception of a type face and the arduous implementation process leading to the final letterform for print production. At that time, he was finishing up Optima and his wife, Gudrun, was still working on refining a version of Diotima and various cuts of Palatino.
American typographic education is another myth that has to die. Before the dawn of digital typography, few professionals received a solid introduction or education in typography; therefore the majority had little understanding of the typesetting processes. One of the exceptions was Yale because of the very close connection between the design program and the Yale Press. (If one would look at Yale student portfolios under Ives and Thompson, one would become aware that Yalies used lots of superb images from the library archives and photography. But few graduated as “form-conscious” designers, who could handcraft complex graphic images through observation and drawing. That came later through Armin Hofman in the seventies.) Most other schools had very poor typography programs, and very few graphic designers graduated with a functioning knowledge of typography. Students knew more about letterform. They could render headlines with brush and pencil, but had little experience with blocks or columns of type, quite different from students nowadays.
Neither Muriel (art education), Jackie (fashion illustration), nor Ralph (architecture) had been formally trained in type. But on their desks were Müller-Brockmann’s books, later Emil Ruder’s. The MIT team learned typography on the hoof, by trial and error, and with hefty punishment for mistakes, when the budget was exhausted early by mediocre decisions. Thérèse Moll was their indirect typography teacher. She helped to clean up their act.
When it comes to me, I always claim that I was very lucky: I had the right pedigree and more. I spoke with a Bauhaus accent, owned a Minimalist portfolio, and had handskills neither Jackie, Ralph, nor Muriel could match, and arrived in the US at the right time and at the right place, MIT. In the same ways design curricula in the US were weak in typography, so was typography at my school in Hamburg. My true fortune in skills came through the fact that I entered the design profession before the onset of offset printing. I started in the letterpress era, and recall that, in Hamburg, one of the very first offset presses was seen as a technical phenomenon in the mid-fifties. However my very first professional appointment was 1957 with Chemie Grünenthal GmbH, a young pharmaceutical company (attached to the Dalli-Werke, a much older and larger soap manufacturing company, with a history including a seventeenth-century copper smelting furnace). We were required to use the in-house type shop and letterpress printshop. I was forced to learn all operations as quickly as possible, otherwise my job assignment would have come to an early end.
I learned modular typography by being also partially responsible for sharing with other staff members a very complex packaging system that was based on modular proportions of the various package sizes for ointments, pills, lozenges, powders, vaccination phials, bottles, cartons, and bags for every variety of medication for men and beast. Each package was printed in one ink, a dark green. The proportion of the typographic field holding the corporate identity had to be considered in relationship to the various product sizes as well as to the individual identities of families of products. The task was to reduce the overall inventory that seemed like an explosion of products, sizes, and packages, to a minimum. At Grünenthal, we did not use Müller-Brockmann’s “grid,” dividing the plane into equal units. Instead, we used something close, but not as sophisticated as Karl Gerstner’s dynamic proportional programming. The use of modular typographic systems, in our case, started with the packaging system. It was later expanded especially into the design of modular exhibition systems that could be downsized or up-scaled for the various pharmaceutical congresses all over Europe, and then later to publications.
For me, this became the beginning of seeing and responding to the visual world through proportion, not through frozen geometry or the grid. To set up a geometric formula takes little time and effort, because the intentions are to press everything into the modules. Dynamic proportional programming, like Gerstner’s, requires careful assessment and considerations of all components—not just text and image, but the tertiary structure proportions that are embedded in the character of the letterform and the contents of the image. The proportion embedded within the image infers and instructs the development of the structure, which surrounds the image or the typographical blocks. To achieve an equilibrium is not only arduous but so much more time consuming. The result, however, provides for a totally rewarding experience when the slowly evolving system accommodates every and all major components without force.
My design training and job experience, having had to practice typography in the real world rather than relying on theoretical interpretations from books or Swiss design examples, may have put me ahead for a moment; but both Jackie and Ralph caught up quite quickly, especially Ralph, who, because of his background in architectural design, became very comfortable experimenting with different typographic systems, which became more and more complex and interesting. Jackie, on the other hand, inferred her typographic structures from the organism within the most important component, letterform, or image. When it came to complex text environments like books and pamphlets, she used very simple geometric systems like Müller-Brockmann’s grid.
During the sixties and seventies, paper houses and printshop began to standardize trim sizes, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, 6 x 9 inches, etc. There was a strong office rebellion against the arbitrary restrictions or impositions. If one were to measure exactly the actual trim sizes of publications, one would clearly understand that there was no binding proportional system, no style book of “dos and don’t.” There were discussions about standardization, but this concept were unanimously rejected. Ralph argued with Müller-Brockmann about standardization when he visited the MIT office. I decided that I preferred Gerstner’s approach. But what I learned from Brockmann that day was a true eye-opener, namely Mondrian’s concern with the aggressive dynamics of diagonals, especially those that intersect with corners of canvases. I became aware that most of the diagonals in Mondrian’s constructions organically stop before and never intersect with the corner of the canvases. Since then, I believe, Mondrian was the only one who was able to deal with diagonal, corners, and the super-dynamic world of intersections that each diagonal creates.
To the question of who floated the idea to bring designers from overseas to work at MIT, all true information is not conclusive. There is lots of conjecture. For instance, many of the European professors went in and out of the office, people like Von Hippel, Lukas Täuber, etc. Just to think, Kepes had little knowledge of this new Swiss design movement. Each Swiss pilgrim, looking at him as the last apostle of the Bauhaus era was given short shrift by him. He treated them quite shabbily, as Müller-Brockmann and Armin Hofmann recalled, because he was involved in a deadly competition with Nicolas Schöffer, a Hungarian-French artist, who had taken advantage of Norbert Wiener’s research in cybernetics and applied some of the principles to his monumental sculptural work. He became known as the first cybernetic artist, while Kepes missed the boat in seeing the importance, especially since the original research was done at MIT. It was staring at him from all directions: Jay Forrester at the Sloan School, who developed dynamic system thinking, or John von Neumann, another Hungarian like Kepes, whose research was compared and joined with that of Wiener, and collaborators Gregory Bateson, the English cyberneticist, and his wife, Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist of the sixties.
In 1960, at the Boston Arts Festival, Kepes was still presenting himself as a painter, fully influenced by Modernist principles. By 1965, when Kepes opens the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, he had abandoned painting and dealt only with art that evolves out of emerging technologies. He was no longer interested in graphics.
The question most likely has to be filtered through the pragmatics of the times. One should not forget that in the fifties, at most institutions, as narrow as this sounds, men were in charge of most institutional offices, and the management style was quite rigid, administrated in top-down hierarchical ways. It is also a time when disparate values are still attached to the work of wordsmiths and visualizers, some for very good reasons, because, what is still true today, many designers, and I am among them, have difficulty with grammar and spelling, while the editorial staff was always highly trained in language etiquette, and most of the MIT writers and text editors came from the best of American humanities programs. One also must remember the innate competition between Harvard and MIT, with Harvard always claiming cultural dominance and sophistication. A minor spelling mistake in an MIT publication would prove them right. Such a mistake made everyone at MIT cringe in regret. The writers gave all publications consistency and clarity, and the support for quality was shared by designers. This support seemed to stop short when John Mattill’s management style was discussed.
While John Mattill respected Jackie and Muriel, he always was and wanted to be recognized as boss. (One day, Matill yelled at me: “I don’t want this immediately. I want this now!”) It is quite obvious that both Jackie and Muriel chafed under his leadership, especially Muriel, who from my vantage point, enjoyed chaos, breaking rules, breaking appointments, changing contracts, never being on time (something she picked up from Kepes, who would always be listed on announcements for events, which he would cancel in the last moment; she showed up for a presentation at the Swain School, nearly an hour late, without excuse, while many in the audience were ready to leave), rarely admitting to carelessness or failure or having been mistaken. From a management standpoint, Muriel was not dependable, while Jackie always lived up to her responsibilities, because she identified with MIT. For Jackie, MIT was much more than a workplace. It was her identity and life, her home, especially after her husband died. Erika, my wife, would always ask: “Why does Muriel get away with this and nobody else?” The answer was always: “ Because Muriel gets away with things!”
This sounds as if I disliked Muriel. Not at all! I knew who she was and what to expect. I knew she would use me. I knew the benefits were always on her side. But all of us forgave her, easily. She brought irreverence to the otherwise obedient institutional process. She also was unattached, and I for one, could not take chances with my employment, having responsibilities to provide a home and security. Muriel was only loyal to herself. She was always in a search mode. She taught at Simmons for Dorothy Williams, she collaborated on projects for the Boston Redevelopment Authority with her friend William A. Bagnall, from whom she picked up her odd studio habits, working like an architect on rolls of yellow drafting paper, not like graphic designers, who seemed to prefer to work on brilliant white paper boards. Her layouts were so loose that they had to be interpreted. Mike Brotman of Typgraphic House, a high-quality typesetting service in Boston, would call me, wondering, if I could help him interpret her typography as he was too embarrassed to ask her. I wonder if these scribbles are part of any collection? (I remember one of Muriel’s quirks. She parked wherever she wanted, legally, but mostly illegally, in front of hydrants, right under “no parking” signs, in pedestrian ways, etc. At one point, she had accumulated several hundreds of fines. She would proudly display the tickets, hanging from her rearview mirror…until the “Denver-boot” stopped her cold and she finally had to face the fines (+/– @ a thousand dollars), out of which she talked herself, at a reduction to $200, as the story went.) Muriel was a committed feminist, tied to nobody, running barefoot through MIT hallways, wearing paper dresses, and always in a mode of unpredictable behavior, some lovable, some horrible. We saw Muriel off to Europe with two paper-bags full of her stuff, running through Logan, late as always, nearly missing her flight, yelling: “Wait for me…wait for me!” (which became our office slogan and cry). I never could understand the struggle between the wordsmiths and the image makers. I guess, part came form Kepes’s (an image is worth a thousand words) erroneous insistence that in communication the image is primary and more efficient than text. Now we know under certain circumstances or in certain contexts both text or image alone can facilitate communication. There is no question that John Mattill ranked high in the eyes of the administration. He was a confidante to all upper level administrators, and over time became one of the main institutional chroniclers for MIT. Isn’t it strange that neither Muriel nor Jackie would give him any credit? Meanwhile he survived and outlived them.
John was also very much connected to the outside world. He was a very revered member of two institutional organizations, namely the American College Public Relations Association and the American Alumni Council. These groups were trying to improve the quality of university publications. There were competitions and conferences. For decades, one of the key persons was Charles Helmkin, who was closely connected with all the best American and international designers. If anything, Helmken and/or also Dorothy Williams at Simmons may have been people that put the Swiss bee into Mattill’s bonnet. Design mythology gives Muriel undue credit, because when one compares her work of the fifties and the work when she is the book designer at the MIT Press, there is too wide a dichotomy, and one can question her supposed early interest in Swiss design. From my experience, she was always much more interested in new gadgets, cameras, film cameras, video. Sometimes in the late sixties or so, with the technical help from Fred Brink of Boston’s Envision company, we staged what we considered the first animated slide show with sound for Muriel at Mass Art. Muriel took full credit without having anything to do with it. The efforts were Fred’s and mine.
John claims he does not remember who put the idea of international designers working in the office for discussion.
When John Mattill asked me to join MIT, James R. Killian was chairman of the MIT Corporation. Killian always championed the causes of the Technology Review, and he was instrumental in the selection of John Mattill as editor-in-chief for the Technology Review in late 1965 or early 1966. Killian had been assistant managing editor, then managing editor, and later editor-in-chief for nine years of the Review, before he was appointed executive vice president and then tenth MIT president. Killian also helped found the “Technology Press,” today’s “MIT Press.”
Killian took keen interests in design and was very knowledgable in the aesthetics and mechanics of movable letters and letterpress as well as the gravure printing processes. He considered design an important tool for shaping an institutional image and therefore was willing to spend lots of time with his design team. Before I was appointed, I had a two-hour interview with Dr. Killian, something that one does not hear of today. He took great care in looking at my work. But the conversation was about the emerging internal style, which he considered was in line with the interests of the university. He had observed that it fit the language of scientists, clear, unambiguous, sharp. I had brought three portfolios: my design work at the Hamburg school; my professional work for Chemie Grünenthal, a German pharmaceutical corporation, and my work for Reach, McClinton and Humphreys; and my association with Leverett A. Peters. He was interested in everything, especially in a series of magazine advertisements, which I designed for Harold Edgerton’s company, when I worked on the account of Edgerton, Germershausen and Grear at a Boston agency. I believe he was critically involved in my selection to the staff, because John Mattill reported directly to him.
This amazing spirit spread to other administrators, like Howard Johnson, who was inaugurated president in 1966; however, by the late seventies the administrative priorities had shifted and the bond had slowly dissolved, as MIT was facing for the first time financial droughts due to end of the Vietnam War and retrenchment of research for military purposes. After the eighties, the close relationships between CEO or board chairs and MIT Office of Publications seem to have faded and no longer existed.
In 1965, the president’s office, board office, and publications office were not only in very close vicinity to one another, they were next door from each other. Almost on a daily basis, corporate officers would come to the Office of Publications. On some occasions, our office was used as a depository, and sometimes cultural treasures were displayed there, like an original copy of Gutenberg’s “Forty-two-line Bible.” The MIT president and board chairman would invite philanthropists like Mr. Underwood, president of the Underwood Ham Company, to have a look at these treasures. (If this original copy was on loan or a property of the university, I don’t recall.) This relationship grew into a trust, and the efforts of, what was clear then and is even more clear today, the work of a very committed design team was never challenged.
I remember, when we complained that most posters were being stolen long before the many cultural events and lectures had taken place, President Johnson encouraged departments just to increase the print quantity. He thought that these thefts were a positive sign, because the posters and announcements would end up in offices, dormitories, and other informal places.